Overview of the Mary Perry Smith Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame Archives Collection, approximately 1974-2006
A Guide to Her Holdings at the Indiana University Black Film
Center/Archive
Finding aid prepared by BFC/A Staff
Summary Information
Repository
Indiana University
Black Film Center/Archive
1320 East Tenth Street
Herman B Wells Library, Room 044
Bloomington, IN 47405-7000
Phone: 812-855-6041
Fax: 812-856-5832
Email: bfca@indiana.edu
http://www.libraries.iub.edu/~bfca
Creator
Smith, Mary Perry, 1926-2015
Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame, Inc.
TitleOverview of the Mary Perry Smith Black
Filmmakers Hall of Fame Archives Collection, approximately 1974-2006
Collection No.
COL 5
Extent
102 boxes +
1231 videorecordings +
11 film reels +
65 audio recordings +
64 data diskettes
Language
Materials are in English.
Abstract
This collection contains a wide array of
materials documenting the history and activities of the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame
(BFHFI). The materials were collected and/or created by Mary Perry Smith from the time immediately predating the BFHFI's first
Black History Month celebration in 1974 to the efforts of its remaining supporters to
revitalize the organization following its final film festival in 2003. Highlights include
event publicity and souvenirs; celebrity memorabilia; moving image and screenplay submissions to the
BFHFI's annual competition; Phil Moore's personal papers, arrangements, lyric sheets,
recordings, and photographs; video recordings of BFHFI events; correspondence; and
administrative, board, and planning documents.
Access Restrictions
Print materials in the collection are open for research. Audiovisual materials are
currently on a number of obsolescent carrier types (open reel video, U-matic, etc.), but will
be digitized by the Indiana University Media Digitization and Preservation Initiative (MDPI)
and made available for fair use purposes upon request between early 2016 and late 2018.
Contact the BFC/A staff for the latest details.
Biography of Mary Perry Smith and the Administrative History of the BFHFI
In addition to her roles as an educator, a philanthropist, and a guardian of black cultural
heritage, Mary Perry Smith was a co-founder of Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame.
Smith was born in Evansville, Indiana on May 29, 1926 where Smith's father was a minister for
the African Methodist Episcopal Church. As the location of his ministry changed, the family
moved to several small towns in Indiana including Logansport, Anderson, Crawfordsville, and
Frankfort. Smith's father was also an educator and school principal and continually emphasized the
importance of education and black history to his family.
Following the issue of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1963, several of Smith's grandparents attended
historically black colleges, as did many of her other relatives. These included Tuskegee, the
Hampton Institute, Florida A&M, Atlanta University, Howard University, Spelman, and
Morehouse. Hearing and learning about her grandparents’ experiences under slavery and their
successes and setbacks following the proclamation instilled in Smith a strong racial
consciousness, but also the knowledge that her own abilities were limited by neither her
race nor gender.
Smith attended Ball State on a freshman year scholarship where she majored in math and
science. She then went on to complete her masters at Purdue University in 1948. Upon
obtaining her degree, Smith moved to Houston to teach at Texas Southern University where she
met and married her husband, Norvel Smith. They later moved to San Francisco to attend
graduate school at Caltech where Smith pursued, but did not complete, a doctorate in
educational psychology. This was due to her increased involvement in teaching junior high math
and science in the San Francisco School District from 1953 to 1961 and then teaching
geometry and arithmetic at Oakland Tech High School from 1961 to 1978. Noticing that few of her students went on to attend
college,
even though the University of California Berkley was located less than five miles from the high school, Smith was inspired
to co-found the Mathematics Engineering Science
Achievement program (MESA) in 1969. As the program grew, Smith switched to working full-time for MESA in 1978 at the
Lawrence Hall of Science.
When the Oakland Museum of California (OMCA) opened in 1969, both Norvel and Mary Perry Smith
became actively involved. Mary participated in the Black History Committee of the
Culture and Ethnic Affairs Guild that was formed in 1970 under the oversight of Ben Hazard, the museum's curator of special
exhibits and education. Some of the earliest programming presented by the guild included the Soul Vibrations
Festival, first held in November 1970, and an annual series dedicated to black pioneers in the Bay Area. The 1972 program
honored the first black pioneers to migrate to the Bay Area while the 1973 program honored seven
black scientists.
Continuing this series of programing, in 1974 the guild honored the black filmmakers of the
'20s through the '50s. The program was presented under the moniker of the Black
Filmmakers Hall of Fame and put together by Sonny Buxton (Community Services Director of
KGO-TV), Roy Thomas (lecturer in Afro-American Studies at the University of
California-Berkley), and Mary Perry Smith in her role as co-chairperson of the Culture and
Ethnic Affairs Guild. The first film lecture series and Oscar Michaeux Awards Ceremony were
an amazing success. In addition to being celebrated by the local Oakland community, black
filmmakers, and the black community at large, the BFHF garnered accolades from the California House and Senate. This inspired
the OMCA to transform and expand the
awards ceremony into an annual Black History Month celebration. The events included the film
lecture series hosted by the museum from January up until the weekend of the awards
ceremony, a film symposium hosted by UC Berkley, a film competition, a celebrity dinner and
dance gala, a sidewalk reception, and the awards ceremony. The BFHF identified itself as an
organization "dedicated to influencing Black images portrayed in film and television through
education, the nurturing of current independent filmmakers and the preservation of
contributions by Black artists" (BFHFI 20th Anniversary Celebration Program).
A large-scale volunteer effort, the BFHF soon outgrew the resources and energy of the staff
at the museum and so became a separate, incorporated non-profit organization in 1978. In addition
to the celebration events in January and February, the now BFHFI also sponsored and hosted master
classes, workshops, film screenings, and other educational events throughout the year. 1990
marked the start of Black Filmworks, a film festival designed to showcase the winning
submissions to the annual film competition. Hoping to start its own brick and mortar museum,
the BFHFI also acquired memorabilia and artifacts from a number of celebrities including
Ruby Dee, the Nicholas Brothers, Sidney Poitier, and Phil Moore (note that due to their volume, Moore's materials are represented
as a separate collection
for descriptive purposes, but are officially part of the BFHFI Archives). Inductees
and awardees included celebrities and notable filmmakers such as Paul Robeson, Stepin
Fetchit, Gordon Parks, Sammy Davis, Jr., Diahann Carol, Dizzy Gillespie, Sidney Poitier,
Harry Belefonte, Julie Dash, Spike Lee, Brock Peters, Maya Angelou, Tempestt Bledsoe, Jim
Brown, Madame Sul-Te-Wan, Richard Pryor, and many others.
Although financial instability prevented the museum from becoming a reality and led to the
end of the annual celebration in 1993, the BFHFI continued to host Black Filmworks and a
number of smaller events until 2003. From then on, most of its activities were focused on
fundraising events and planning meetings aimed at revitalizing the organization. During its entire
existence, the BFHFI had one full-time staff position, although it did hire a number of
hourly employees and was supported by hundreds of volunteers over the years.
Smith played a number of leading and energetic roles in the organization, which included the following:
1974 |
Co-chairperson of the Oakland Museum of California Culture and Ethnic Affairs Guild |
1975 |
First chairman of the advisory board |
1976 |
Member of board of advisers and chairperson of the Guild steering
committee
|
1977 |
Educational programs committee member |
1978 |
Coordinator of the educational programs committee |
1979 |
General chairperson of the advisory board |
1980-1981 |
Coordinator of the educational programs committee> |
1981-1983 |
1st vice president |
1982-1983 |
Chair of the education committee |
1984-approximately 1995 |
Board president |
approximately 1996 through end |
Board member or co-chair |
Previous board presidents included Margot Hicks Sudduth (1977-1978), the Honorable Benjamin
Travis (1978-1979), Vincent Tubbs (1979-1980), and James O. Cole (1980-1983). Those
following Smith included Terrence Johnson (1996?-2002), Frank Smith, Jr. (2002-?).
Smith’s tireless efforts greatly influenced the shape and direction of the BFHFI, and her
careful stewardship of the collection has helped ensure that this and future generations
will have access to this invaluable documentation on black filmmaking in the last quarter of
the 20th century.
Sources
Mary Perry Smith, "An Interview with Mary Perry Smith, Co-Founder of MESA," conducted
by Nadine Wilmot in 2002, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of
California, Berkeley, 2003. Also available online:
http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/roho_disclaimer_cgi.pl?target=http://digitalassets.lib.berkeley.edu/roho/ucb/text/MaryPerrySmithBook.pdf
(last accessed 2015-06-03).
Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame souvenir programs, 1974-1993.
Black Filmworks programs, 1992, 1996, 1998, 2000-2003.
Scope and Content Note
The collection consists primarily of organizational records, photographs, videorecordings, publicity
materials, and memorabilia documenting the activities of the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame
from 1974 through 2006. A large portion of the printed materials include administrative and
planning documents for the BFHFI's various events including the Oscar Micheaux Awards
Ceremony, the film lecture series and symposiums, the annual Black Filmworks festival and
Independent Film, Video & Screenplay competition from 1990-2003, the Sidney Poitier
Fellowship competition held in 1993, and a number of master classes, workshops, film screenings,
and fundraising events hosted from approximately 1984-2006. The collection also includes
correspondence (primarily internal and outgoing); publicity materials such as event flyers,
awards ceremony catalogs, press clippings, and press releases; financial documents; and
Board agendas, minutes, reports, and planning documents. There are also a significant number
of screenplays and application packets submitted to the BFHFI's competitions.
Well over half of the video recordings in the collection are submissions by student and
up-and-coming filmmakers to the annual film competition and the Sidney Poitier Fellowship
Competition. The remainder predominantly document BFHFI events or are screening and
promotional copies used for planning and hosting film screenings.
The photographs in the collection are a mix of inductee and filmmaker publicity photos, photographs and slides of
BFHFI events, and candid photos of the BFHFI's staff and volunteers.
The memorabilia and artifacts in the collection range from signed copies of Oscar Micheaux
novels to costumes and accessories worn by celebrities such as Ruby Dee and Mario Van
Peebles. There are also a number of plaques created for the inductees and designed by Ben Hazard, signed celebrity
hand prints created under the direction of Oakland artist Casper Banjo, a painting of Madame
Sul-Te-Wan from the Manny Weltman collection, Oscar Micheaux's grave marker, and a wide
variety of other ephemera.
In 1993 the BFHFI received a donation of Phil Moore's personal papers, business
records, sheet music, recordings, and ephemera. Moore served as music director for the BFHFI
from roughly 1980 until the time of his death in 1987. These materials were received by the
BFC/A as part of the overall BFHFI archives. Although represented as a series below, due to the size and
complexity of Moore's materials, the finding aid has been treated as if it were a separate collection and the quantity of
material donated by Moore is not reflected in the totals above.
More detailed information regarding the scope and content of the collection is available in
each series-level finding aid.
Arrangement
The collection contains the following series for which separate finding aids will be made available
as they are completed:
Series 1.
Publicity materials
Series 2.
Oscar Micheaux Awards Ceremony and Gala
Series 3.
Film Lecture Series and Symposiums
Series 4.
Black Filmworks
and Independent Film, Video & Screenplay Competition
Series 5.
Sidney Poitier
Fellowship Competition
Series 6.
Miscellaneous BFHFI events files
Series 7.
BFHFI event recordings
Series 8.
Board and committee documents
Series 9.
General correspondence
Series 10.
HRMS, volunteer, and staff documents
Series 11.
General financial, fundraising, and legal documents
Series 12.
Memorabilia and artifacts
Series 13.
Third party publications
Series 14.
Research files
Series 15.
Mary P. Smith's files
Series 16.
Miscellaneous
Series 17. Phil Moore Collection (Inventoried as if separate collection due to
size)
Series 18. Photographs
Series 19. Born-digital materials
-
Indexing Terms
-
The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in
IUCAT, the IU Libraries' online catalog.
Materials about related topics, persons or places can be found by searching the catalog
using these terms.
-
-
-
-
Genres/Forms
-
Independent
films
-
Records
(Documents)
-
Award
presentations (Motion pictures)
-
Ephemera
-
Notated
music
Related Material
Additional materials documenting the activities of the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame may be
found in the Belva Davis and William Moore Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame Archives Collection (COL 4) also held
by the BFC/A.
http://purl.dlib.indiana.edu/iudl/findingaids/archives/VAD4434
Administrative Information
Acquisition Information
The collection was donated by Mary Perry
Smith to the Indiana University Black Film Center Archives in January
2014
Usage Restrictions
Materials may be used in-house at the BFC/A; duplication permitted only with permission
of the Archivist.
Preferred Citation
[item], Mary Perry Smith Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame Archives Collection, Black Film
Center/Archive, Indiana University, Bloomington.
Processing InformationProcessed by BFC/A staff.
Completed in 2015